Sermons
Here we try to publish as many of the sermons given in St Edward's as possible. The majority of them are given by Father Dylan James, our Parochial Administrator, but visiting priests obviously preach as well. Where possible we publish their sermons too but, sadly, they do not always make them available and we do not record or transcribe them.
To read a sermon, simply click on the date that you would like to see.
If you would like to see the sermons from 2009, please click here.
If you would like to see the sermons from 2008, please click here.
21st February 2010, First Sunday in Lent
14th February 2010, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
24th January 2010, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
17th January 2010, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
10th January 2010, The Baptism of The Lord
3rd January 2010, The Epiphany
Other occasional texts - these are not published with any regularity and so are listed here in the order in which they are written, circulated or published.
14th February 2010 - on Fasting & Abstinence
This paper was circulated with the newsletter on 14th February 2010 - the weekend before the beginning of Lent.
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are ‘Days of Fasting and Abstinence’, which means that:
All Catholics age 14 and older are required to abstain:
“The law of abstinence forbids the eating of meat, but eggs, milk products, and condiments made from meat may be eaten. Fish and all cold blooded animals may be eaten, e.g., frogs, clams, turtles, etc.”
All Catholics age 18 and older, but under the age of 59, are required to fast:
“The law of fast prescribes that only one full meal a day is taken. [In addition] Two lighter meals are permitted to maintain strength according to each one's needs. Eating between meals is not permitted, but liquids, including milk and fruit juices, are allowed.”
(Pope Paul VI, Paenitemini, 1966, (the current law in 2010)).
Fasting and abstaining are important ways for us to unite ourselves with Our Lord’s 40 days in the desert. Christ fasted, the Early Church fasted, and Christians down through the ages have fasted. All fasting helps us grow in spiritual self-discipline to prevent future sin and helps us offer up penance in reparation for our past sins. Abstaining is a mild form of fasting in that we deny ourselves a particular pleasure, namely meat. By observing these days as communal fast days we join with the whole Church across the world in acknowledging the importance of these particular days. Children and the elderly are strongly encouraged to fast even when the law does not bind them (Canon 1252), or to offer up some other acts of self-denial.
And in case you were wondering… Canon Law specifies: If your 14th or 18th birthday happens to fall on a ‘day of fasting and abstinence’ then you are not required to fast/abstain. However, if your 59th birthday (or any other birthday apart from your 14th or your 18th) falls on a day of fasting then you are bound by the law of fasting; the obligation ceases on the next day. Sorry.
14th February 2010 - 'Giving it up' for Lent
This paper was circulated with the newsletter on 14th February 2010 - the weekend before the beginning of Lent.
The practice of ‘giving something up for Lent’ is an important way of fasting. Fasting is good for us for four reasons:
First, at a human level, like dieting, fasting disciplines our desires. The things of this world are good, but we frequently want them in a way that is bad for us, or we want the wrong things at the wrong time. We need to discipline our desires, and this is what fasting does. This doesn’t mean we fast continually: Christians have feast days as well as fast days, but fasting enables discipline.
Second, at a supernatural level, more than mere dieting, fasting is a prayer. It thus needs to be offered to God; ‘offer your very bodies as a living sacrifice acceptable to God’ (Rom 12:1). In particular, fasting is something we can offer for our sins: in atonement and reparation for past sins, by uniting them to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. In general, fasting is something we can offer as a prayer for matters of great importance, as Christ told his disciples that some things can only be achieved by ‘prayer and fasting’ (Mk 9:29). Also, during Lent, uniting prayer and fasting imitates our Lord who both prayed and fasted in his 40 days in the Desert. Fasting without praying can sometimes just make us grumpy and disagreeable!
Third, fasting (and any form of penance) is also a means of detachment: when we deny ourselves some form of pleasure we help to detach ourselves from it; this helps to orient ourselves more on God and less on earthly things.
Fourth, fasting can change the way we act towards others. If we’re purifying and detaching ourselves, then we should be more free to love. One way we do this is by the traditional Lenten practice of giving to the poor.
Finally, this can be summed up by noting the Church’s threefold Lenten remedy for sin: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (giving to the poor). These three should all go together, not in opposition, i.e. it’s not enough to say, ‘Oh, I’m not giving up things, I’m doing something positive!’ Each of us would do well to add a small part of each of these three to our Lenten season: add a small prayer to your usual daily or weekly routine, give something up for Lent, and give some money to a good charity.
The Sermons
21st February 2010, The First Sunday in Lent
Lk 4:1-13; Deut 26:4-10
This Lent I’m giving up alcohol, chocolate, snacks, sugar in my tea, and much of my favourite television.
You might think this will make Lent gloomy and miserable, but the Church actually calls Lent “joyful”: the phrase in the first of the Lenten Preface prayers calls Lent, “This joyful season”. I want to say why.
But before I say why, I want to remind you that Lent is a time to ‘give something up’. There is a rather vague notion in circulation that says, “Well, I’m just going to do something POSITIVE instead” – but this notion is not in the ancient saints who first wrote about Lent, it is not in the saints down the ages, and is not in the teachings of the Church today. Now, it is true, prayer and fasting should lead us to be better people with more love, doing ‘positive’ things, so ‘prayer, fasting, and alms-giving’ go together.
But it is a mistake to think that you can bypass the prayer and fasting, bypass the ‘giving things up for Lent’ – we NEED the discipline and self-denial of Lent if we are to ever become good and ‘positive’. And it’s important for children to learn this from a young age. Lent is about going into the desert with Jesus to fast and pray as He did for 40 days - but, this does not make it miserable.
So, being miserable. I’ll admit that when I give up something for Lent I do have a certain type of sadness: already in these last few days, I have had moments when it was my normal time for a snack, I remembered that it was Lent, and I thought, "but I WANT a chocolate cake!”.
But there is a benefit to feeling that type of sadness, and one of the benefits is that it focuses me on what can give me a much truer form of "joy”.
One of the reasons that I am sad about not eating that chocolate cake is that there is a little voice that is saying to me, "the only pleasure that exists is the pleasure you can have right now, is the pleasure in that rich, mouth-watering, chocolate muffin".
But that little voice is lying to me, just as the devil lied when he tempted Jesus in the desert.
The truth is that the greatest pleasures are not those of this world but are the joys that call to us from the next.
So, one of the reasons that Lent is a "joyful season" is that the fasting, discipline, the giving-things-up for Lent –all of this reminds us and focuses us on the truth that our true happiness lies beyond.
Our first reading included the ‘creed’ of the Jewish people, “a wandering Aramaean was my father...”: recalled how God had chosen them, rescued them from Egypt, and brought them to a Promised Land.
Lent can give us joy if it helps us remember the "promised land" of heaven that awaits those who do not spend this life living as if there was no hereafter.
Another reason why giving things up for Lent should be an act of joy is that it should be an act of love, an act that unites us to the loving Lord who suffered and died for us, who ‘gave things up’ for us –on the Cross and in the desert fasting.
There is a something that follows on from this, Let me make a comparison: there are many goodhearted unbelievers who choose to give things up for Lent - I hear people on the radio say such things, and I meet strangers around town who say such things. But for such people, without faith, it is just self discipline – without asking the help and grace of Jesus, without the strength of Jesus. And this means that it is much more hard work - to do this alone.
In contrast, if I have faith, then when I give things up for Lent I do so WITH Jesus and WITH His help. So when I want that snack or glass of wine I can pray, “Jesus, the cake that is not here in front of me, but I would normally rather like to have in front of me, this cake that is not here: I offer it to you”.
By transforming that act of self discipline to an act of fasting, an act of prayer, I then have Jesus to help me.
In summary: giving things up for Lent is our share in Christ’s 40 days in the desert, it helps us grow in the self-discipline that the self-denial of fasting gives us, it helps us detach ourselves from the pleasures of this world and orient ourselves in faith to the joys of the next. And in doing all this WITH our loving Lord, it should be a season of joy.
14th February 2010, The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jer 17:5-8; 1 Cor 15:12-20; Lk 6:17-26.
Recently it seems that I am being frequently reminded of the fact that I'm not as young as I used to be. A while ago I met up with some old school friends, and the talk turned to their various pension plans. We never used to talk about pensions when we went to the pub for a pint! It turned out that I was the only one who hadn't given serious thought to the level of my retirement income.
And it occurred to me that there was something rather ironic about that fact. All my school friends are atheists, and thinking a little further ahead still in life, I realised that I was probably the only one who had started to arrange my plans for what I'd be hoping to do when I'd passed to the great beyond and was no longer able to claim my pension.
Today's readings all point us towards the futility of trusting in material goods, whether they are solid houses or future pensions. Jesus says, "Alas you rich... alas you who have your fill now", and Jeremiah says, "A curse on the man who relies on things of the flesh".
It's very easy for us to put our trust in possessions, especially when we have them. But you don't need to be a Christian to see that worldly fortune can be very changeable, and that ultimately the things of this world do not last. We cannot put our trust in them.
The only one we can trust is the Lord Our God, and we can trust him because of the promises He has made to us, ultimately, the promise of heaven. The most solid sign of that promise is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Saint Paul was writing to the Corinthians because it seems that they had stopped believing that it was possible for life to go on after death, it seems that pagan philosophies had told them that the “body” cannot rise, and St Paul reminded them that the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that it is possible: “But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 16:19). Not only that, Christ's resurrection is the promise of the future glory that awaits those who trust in Him, He is the “fruits fruits” (Ibid).
We too live in a world where few people believe in life after death, at least in any explicit way. And yet this is the most fundamental of all our Christian beliefs, it is the one that affects the whole way we view reality. Jesus pointed this out in the Beatitudes that we just heard: He said happy are the poor, and alas to you who are rich. These are statements that are meaningless nonsense if there is no hereafter. They only make sense as a promise by Our Lord that in eternal life every injustice will be resolved, and the happiness He calls us to will be achieved.
If we really believe this then it turns all worldly values upside down. What matters ceases to be whether or not I possess something, or whether I am financially secure. What matters is whether or not doing or not doing something will help me on the way to heaven. Everything else is secondary. We do, and should, joyfully accept good things as gifts from God, little tasters (appetisers) of the happiness of heaven, and yet we must still not value them as ends in themselves.
(pause)
The question today's readings put to us is: Where do I put my trust, in God or in my possessions? I may not have a pension plan, but that doesn't mean that I'm not materialistic in my outlook. The real pension plan that I need to save for in the one that only fully matures in heaven.
24th January 2010, The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lk 1:1-4;4:14-21; Neh 8:2-10
Often when I visit Catholic homes I can see the family Bible placed somewhere prominent and important on the bookshelf. Prominent, important and dusty. It may have been bought with good intentions, but like many things, reading the Bible can be a neglected part of our faith, and our Bibles can end up with years of dust built on top. Other homes may not have Bibles at all.
I went to the funeral of one of the more popular priests of the Dorset deanery yesterday, Fr Geoffrey Watts, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack age 63. And, as at every funeral, at the start the Gospel book was placed on the coffin and the word, “in life, Fr Geoffrey cherished the Gospel of Christ, may Christ now greet him with these word of eternal life: come blessed of my Father”. And I thought, as these words were said of my brother priest: someday those words will be said of me, but will they be TRUE of me – do I CHERISH the Word of God? Because I say those words over many coffins and it is sometimes less true and sometimes more true.
Today, both our Gospel and our First Reading give accounts of people readings from the Scriptures – and the Jews treasured their Scriptures highly. There was no chance of Jesus getting to Nazareth, asking for the Scriptures, and being told, “Now I’m sure we had one somewhere around the place”.
The Jews treasured their Scriptures with good reason – they knew that it was their Scriptures that recalled their identity to them. It was there that they had a RECORD of what God had done for them, how He had rescued them from Egypt, from Babylon, how He’d taught them, and given them the Law on Mount Sinai.
As Catholics, it is often said that we don’t read the Bible much. And on one level it is true that we are not “people of the book” in the way that Protestants are: as Catholics, we hold that Scripture needs Tradition and the Church with it. The Scriptures need a context in which to be interpreted and understood, so they need to be seen in the light of the Sacred Tradition of the Church. We also need to remember that there are truths of our faith that are passed down by spoken word and tradition as St. Paul puts it (2 Thess 2:15; 2 Tim 2:2), as well as in what was written in the Bible. In addition, as well as needing the tradition as the context to interpret the Scripture we also need an authority to give an authentic interpretation of the Scriptures, which is especially important for much debated texts, and this is why God gave us the apostles, and their successors the Pope and Bishops.
But we cannot forget the fact that we DO need to know the Scriptures, because otherwise we do not know the true God. We may have our own thoughts, our own memories and images, but the only way we know if they are true is if they measure up to the truth as we find it in the Scriptures. As the great St. Jerome put it, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”. Christ is THE Word of God, the complete one Word spoken by the Father, and He has nothing more to say. If we want to know what He has said, then we must read and be familiar with the Scriptures.
This is why, when we come to Mass every Sunday we don’t hear some nice quotes from popular modern poets, and we don’t hear readings from great politicians. We hear readings from the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures, because this is the written record of God’s holy Word.
And we believe that the Scriptures are not JUST records of what Jesus did and taught, but they are the INSPIRED record – so that they are free from all error. While we need to analyse the context and meaning of different texts, distinguishing poetry and imagery in the Old Testament, from historical fact in the Gospel accounts – it is nonetheless all written for our good. As the Good Book itself says, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim 3:17)
If you don’t already do so, I’d urge you all to put aside some regular brief time to read the Bible, preferably daily. Find where that Bible is, blow the dust off it, and set yourself to learn more about the Christ who is eternal life. And if you don’t have one already – we can order you one in the bookstall. Jesus said that that text was being fulfilled even as the people listened – let’s make sure we know the text, so that we can know when it is fulfilled in our hearts.
17th January 2010, The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jn 2:1-12; Isa 62:1-5
This Christmas I'm sure that a great many of you were given things that you didn't really want. For example, across our entire country I wonder how many men opened the wrapping to find inside a tie that they could never picture themselves wearing.
For myself, this Christmas I was giving a pair of "welly warmers” - big loose fleece liners to go inside my Wellington boots. On Christmas day this seemed to be the most useless and unwanted present I had received some time. However, a week and a half ago we had the first of a series of snow falls, and I have worn my wellies more this last week than during the entire previous year, and my “welly warmers” have been manifested to be the surprise most useful Christmas gift of 2009!
Sometimes things are revealed to be much more than we first thought them to be. “Welly warmers” might be a supremely trivial example, but I start with that example as an illustration of how Jesus was manifested to be much more than He was thought to be when He worked His miracle at the wedding feast at Cana.
One of the things that we need to recall in considering how Jesus was revealed, manifested at His first miracle, is the simple fact that His followers didn't really know Him yet. They knew that this was the man that John the Baptist was talking about 'preparing the way for'; this was the man about whom John the Baptist said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29). They knew enough that Andrew said to his brother Peter, "We have found the Messiah" (Jn 1:41). They knew enough that they were following, that they had responded to His call, “Follow me” (Jn 1:43). And, given that Galilee was a small place and Nazareth and Capernaum small towns, it is conceivable that they would have heard of the events surrounding His birth: the choirs of angels appearing to shepherds, the star in the sky, and the Gentile wise men coming from the east.
There were at least two more things that were revealed to them, and are revealed to us, by His first miracle at Cana. The first, more symbolically, is the significance of the wedding feast as the context for the miracle. When you heard our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, you might have thought it was unrelated to this: it was a description in the Old Testament of the love that God had for His Chosen People, a love such that He called Himself the ‘bridegroom’ and His people the ‘bride’ – “no longer are you to be named ‘Forsaken’... but you shall be called ‘My Delight’ and your land ‘The Wedded’ ” (Isa 62:4). When Jesus came as the long awaited Messiah He came as the loving bridegroom coming to save His bride. The fact that He worked His first miracle in the context of a wedding feast is taken to be one of the ways that He claimed to be the Messiah. And for us today, we know that the love that the Bridegroom, the Messiah, the "Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world", was ultimately manifested on the cross. And the role of the Messiah as a LOVING Bridegroom is one of the things manifested at Cana.
The second thing revealed at Cana was both simple and important: the Messiah was to be a miracle-worker. We ourselves are probably so familiar with Jesus that we forget the significance of His working miracles. At one level His miracles were significant in proving His claim to be the Messiah and His claim to be God. But at a deeper level His miracles also show us HOW the loving Bridegroom cares for His Bride:
The loving Bridegroom cared for His Bride by healing her many wounds: He healed the sick, He raised the dead, He forgave sin. But the loving Bridegroom also cared for His Bride by satisfying her needs: He fed the 5,000 when they were hungry in the wilderness, and, as we recall today, He even provided them with wine when they didn't have enough. And this is a sign of how the Lord provides for US in our needs, TODAY.
As I have said in previous weeks, today’s gospel is the conclusion of a three-week epiphany: His manifestation to the wise men from the east as the King for the Gentiles and not just the Jews; His manifestation at His baptism in the Jordan as the “Son” of the Father; and today, His manifestation as the loving Bridegroom who CARES for His Bride – His Bride being us, being the People who choose to follow Him; His manifestation as the miracle-worker who has the power to give us what we need.
10th January 2010, The Baptism of The Lord
Lk 3:15-16; 21-22
Today, in Church, we still have our Christmas decorations: we have the Christmas tree, we have the crib. Today, in Church, we are still within what the Church calls the Christmas season. And yet, today we celebrate a feast that seems to not be a Christmas feast, namely, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We do this with two basic reasons.
First, today's feast is a continuation of the Epiphany. The word "epiphany" means "manifestation": a showing of the baby Jesus to the wise men who came from the East, a showing of the Jewish Messiah to the Gentile nations who had come to worship Him. The feast of the Baptism of the Lord continues this showing by the fact that the voice spoke from heaven at His baptism and publicly declared who He was (and is): “You are my Son, the Beloved”. So today is another epiphany, and it is part of the threefold epiphany that will conclude next week when the gospel for year C maintains the ancient tradition of concluding this epiphany with the showing of Jesus in His first miracle of the marriage feast of Cana, where He changed water to wine (Jn 2:1-11).
But there is a second reason why today's feast belongs in Christmastide, and it's a more subtle reason: His baptism in the River Jordan was another type of birth, a sort of sacramental birth that followed on from His physical birth that was celebrated on Christmas Day. (In saying that, I follow the Church in drawing on the ancient sermon of St Maximus of Turin, Office of readings for 11th January, between the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord).
At Christmas He was born of a virgin, at His baptism He was ‘generated’ (St Maximus) in the water. In Bethlehem His Blessed Mother presented Him to the Magi, that the Magi might adore Him; in the River Jordan the voice of the Father spoke from heaven and presented His Son to the world, that the world might adore Him. At His physical birth the Virgin Mary embraced Him with a mother's love, in the River Jordan God the Father embraced Him with a fatherly love.
But there is another truth that connects these two mysteries, and that is the fact that Jesus did not do either of these things for Himself, rather, He did them for us. Did the Divine Son of the Father need to leave heaven and be born of a virgin? Not for His sake, only for ours. Did the Incarnate Son need to be purified, reborn in the waters of the River Jordan? Not for His sake (he was sinless), only for ours.
As the liturgy prayers say of the waters of the River Jordan, they were "waters made holy by the one who was baptised" - and those waters were made holy by His baptism so that in our baptism we might be made holy, we might become adopted children of the Father, as sons in the Son. Jesus consecrated Himself in His baptism that we might be consecrated in our baptism: as He said later in the Gospels, “I consecrate myself FOR THEIR SAKE”(Jn 17:19).
Today, therefore, might be seen as a celebration of OUR birthday, our sacramental birthday. In our Christian re-birth we die and rise with Christ, but the means by which we do this is the sacrament of baptism, the sacrament that Christ established by sending out His apostles at the end of the Gospel to baptise “the nations”(Mt 28:19), but that He first made possible by being baptised Himself - that our Baptism might be a union with Him and to Him. That is why it is in Christmastime, in the season of His physical birth, that we celebrate what was both His and our sacramental re-birth.
3rd January 2010, The Epiphany
Today, on the feast of Epiphany, we recall how the Wise Men from the East came bearing gifts for the new-born King of the Jews, namely, Christ. This is one of the reasons why it is traditional for us to exchange gifts at Christmas time, also following the example of St Nicholas the third century bishop in Turkey whose feast is 6 December and two was renowned for giving gifts, especially to children.
When we think of the gifts presented at the epiphany it is common to reflect on what one of our hymns calls the "mystic meaning" of these gifts. We have no real idea as to why, in their own minds, the wise men gave these specific gifts, but there are some very clear symbolisms.
Incense is offered before the deity, and so frankincense is a gift fit for the divine Christ-child.
Gold is fit for a king, for He who is a King of Kings.
Myrrh is perhaps the most striking of the gifts. Myrrh is the perfume traditionally used to anoint the dead, something people rarely choose to focus on at a birth -it would be like buying one of those advance funeral payment plans and presenting it to two parents at the birth of their child: rather odd. But Christ was no ordinary child, He is the one who entered this world to die, to die for us.
The gifts that the Magi brought were gifts worthy to worship the newborn Christ. I would suggest to you today, that we would do well to ask ourselves what gift we would bring to the newborn King today. The popular Christmas Carol says "I will give my heart", and I suggest you that today is a good day press to combine such a thought with our New Year resolutions.
New Year resolutions are a very Catholic notion, a very sacramental notion: taking a specific moment as a specific opportunity, an opportunity to change, to repent, to find something in my heart that I will present anew to the Lord.
New Year's Day has already passed but I don't think it's too late to make a resolution for the year. The last two years my primary resolution has been to stop pressing the snooze button on my alarm clock, and while I have got better this, I must confess that this year it is again my primary resolution, so I'm adding it with a new twist to something else again this year.
So, like the Magi, let us today make an offering to the Lord, a gift worthy of Him.
But I would offer a final thought: let us recall the symbolism of the offering that is made in every Mass: the bread and wine are brought forward in procession, symbols of the offerings of our whole lives and of the whole congregation.
And this bread and wine, unworthy and inadequate an offering as it is, this offering is taken by Christ and transformed into the one fitting act of worship: is transformed into Christ Himself, His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity, and it is all offered to the Father -the selfsame sacrifice that He offered once on Calvary is made present again on the altar at Mass.
The wise men from the East, if they had truly known who lay before them in the manger, would have felt that even their gifts of mystic meaning were inadequate for such a king. If we realise that our lives are not worthy to be gifts presented to the King, then let us remember that He knows this already, that He loves us despite this, and that He wants our gifts and offerings despite this, for He is the one who takes what we give Him and transforms it into an offering that is even more.
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